The Modern Art Historian

Coming Summer 2011: More Entries!

Due to working full time and going to school full time, I've fallen extremely behind on blogging. With graduation in site, I plan to start blogging again. New entries will include exhibit reviews. I hope to see a number of exhibits this summer.

Currently, I am studying for comprehensive exams, which begin Friday, May 6th with the slide exam. I'm glad I got the language exam out of the way early so I don't have to stress over it now. (I passed the Spanish exam) This semester I took directed readings on US Art History with Professor Todd, so the comps questions will be based on that. I am a little nervous about the slide exam, as I haven't studied some of these time periods since undergrad. Still, I am almost excited for it, if nothing else so it can be over and I don't have to worry about it anymore. Comps go through Friday the 13th, and then convocation is on May 19th. I hope to have my thesis polished and ready to file before then. The next few weeks will be intense!

Best of luck to everyone out there studying for finals or wrapping up papers - remember, it will all be over soon!

Calling it a Night

One of the most important lessons I learned this semester was not to wrestle with my site in an attempt to achieve perfection. I am tempted to continue tweaking it, as there is more I would like to do, but DreamWeaver is suddenly freaking out and giving me error messages about Spry.htm, which I don't even use. I looked up suggestions online, and all involved overwriting files, and at this point in the evening, with the site due tomorrow, I simply don't want to risk overwriting anything based on internet user's suggestions. 

I thank you all again for your comments and suggestions.

So, at last, here is my final site. Enjoy: Final Project

Cue the Exit Music

The end is here! This has been a really fun and challenging class. I have really enjoyed seeing everyone’s sites change over time, and I am so impressed by how far we have come as a class. I am also really amazed by the people who incorporated Omeka into their sites. I know I learned a lot, and I definitely see using the skills acquired in class more in the future.

 I think my favorite classes were when we did critiques, because it was so helpful to get feedback, and also great to get an outside perspective. I know we all had a tendency to work so long on the projects that it was easy to get wrapped up in little details while missing others.  

While I won’t continue blogging, I do intend to keep up my site after the semester, especially as I conduct more research this summer. For everyone else keeping their sites up, best of luck! I hope everyone has a great summer, and enjoys the well-deserved break.

Thank you to everyone for your constructive criticism throughout the semester – I really appreciated your comments and saw a significant difference when I incorporated them into my site. I enjoyed seeing your projects as well, and also seeing the variety of subjects people are working on.

A special thank you to John for the cookies, they were a wonderful treat each week, and to Lazlo for the incredible goulash.

Post 8. User Participation

I’m a lurker.

I enjoyed Jakob Nielsen’s “Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute” because it really made me think about how I participate and how audiences in general tend to participate on the Web. It also made me feel a little better about being a lurker – I assumed I was in the minority, but now I know I’m in the majority of internet users.

Nielsen’s division of audiences into three categories was at first surprising. I would not have guessed the disparity between the number of people who contribute and the people who “lurk.” Nielsen provided clear descriptions of the three categories: Heavy Contributors, Intermittent Contributors, and Lurkers. While in have in the past tried to be an Intermittent Contributor on various sites, I have too often been turned off by the other posters to even bother. It has seemed to me that forums and comment sections are just venues for bitter/crazy/obsessed people to vent behind the safety of anonymity. For instance, I had to stop reading the comments section on any online newspaper during the 2008 election because the level of vitriol from extremists on the right and the left made me a bit depressed and convinced that the whole country was going mad. (Thanks to Nielsen, I can now assume that only about 1% of the country is crazy.) Even after the election was over, I couldn’t bring myself to click on the comments button.

The same is true with sites like ESPN.com, which as a sports fan I love. I am a hardcore Cowboys fan, and sometimes after a game, I think it’d be nice to see what other people thought about a certain player’s amazing play. However, I have resigned myself to not even scrolling down to see the comments anymore, because they are full of juvenile taunting and name calling from fans of other NFC East teams, and usually devolve into 3 or 4 posters taking over the entire thread to one-up each other with insults and not even mentioning the game. I think Nielsen was spot-on when he explained how Heavy Contributors can lead to poor quality information, because this group tends to dominate other participants and drive them off with their negativity.

 Participant feedback can’t be seen as representative of the audience because of the inequality of participants.  Less frequent contributors, like myself, tend to not want to participate because it’s not seen as worth the effort – what is the point when it’s just going to be overwhelmed by the more active users? Nielsen’s conclusion that you can’t overcome this problem seems accurate to me. I like his more practical goal of encouraging more participants by making it easier for people to participate, and by selecting comments to post (not allowing one group of users to dominate by posting repeatedly). Nielsen’s right that you can’t force people to become frequent contributors, but you can make it more accessible and the environment more friendly for when they do decide to participate.

As for the other sites we visited, I thought The Lost Museumwas really cool. I think it’s a great way to make people feel involved in history. I also liked that there was the option to solve the mystery, or to just browse. I liked being able to walk around through the rooms without actually having to play the mystery-solving game. I do wish more context was given for the site up front, though. I feel like some of the information in the “How to” section would have been better placed on the home page or in an “About” section. If I didn’t have to visit this for an assignment, I don’t think I would have had the patience to sit through the existing intro.

Post 7. Information Architecture

While Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think” is written for general Web sites, and was not specific to history or even academic sites, I found his book informative and well organized. Although much of what Krug writes seems obvious or as common sense, we have all seen Web sites that could be much improved by applying some of the common sense he presents.

I thought the way he presented his information was useful, especially the illustrations demonstrating how subtle changes to such features as links, buttons or menus can slow down your audience’s response time, and even cause you to lose visitors.

I also found it helpful that he grounded his arguments in the context of how humans take in information in daily life, when reading news papers, shopping, or following directions while driving. Many people treat the web as though it’s a particular media that has to be approached differently than print, but Krug shows that success can be achieved by presenting information on the Web using the same conventions people are already used to.

What I found most helpful in this book was the five steps he presents on page 31:

1. Create a clear visual hierarchy

2. Take advantage of conventions

3. Break pages up into clearly defined areas

4. Make obvious what’s clickable

5. Minimize noise

I believe that using these five steps will be helpful in creating a more user friendly site, and, as Krug points out, the easier your site is to use, the more people will want to visit.

The other readings/site visits for this week offered specific examples of how to put some of the concepts addressed by Krug into practice. Overall, I found this week’s readings very helpful in approaching design and layouts of Web sites. It was helpful to read this as we get closer to finishing our final projects.

Images

Here are a two practice images. My project is on the murals at Fair Park in Dallas. The images below are of the muralist Carlo Ciampaglia at work.

This first one presents a challenge because he was standing in front of a white plaster wall with only the outline of the sketch, so I am having difficulty making the figure and foreground blend. 

Before:

 

After:

 

For this one I tried to match as closely as possible the actual color of the murals. 

Before:

 

After:

 

Post 6. Accessibility

            I admit that when I saw the topic of Accessibility, I thought only of people with impaired hearing or vision. I had assumed that most accessibility issues would be solved through the use of a screen reader. I had never actually used a screen reader, but I was familiar with the concept from my working on Web sites through my jobs. I had not really considered other aspects of accessibility, such as the color of text for people with impaired vision or colorblindness. I also had never considered altering text to make it simpler for people with cognitive disabilities. I had not considered the difficulties people with disabilities such as dyslexia encounter when trying to navigate a site.

            The site’s we visited not only detailed the kinds of difficulties and challenges users with disabilities face; they also presented a variety of practical solutions. Of this week’s site visits, the site I found most helpful was Mark Pilgrim’s Dive into Accessibility. I found his method of explaining how certain techniques would be useful to users with different kinds of disabilities. One of the other more useful is making everything on the page searchable. I also enjoyed that he included how these tips could be useful to Google’s search capabilities. I think this aspect shows how making some modifications for accessibility can benefit your site beyond accommodating your audience. These readings were also helpful in pointing out that there is a wide range of people with disabilities that are affected by how you create your web site, though I have to say that the thought of incorporating all of these suggestions seems a little overwhelming. 

Comments on Reading Images

This week I:

Applauded Alan's solution to my question on how to handle photos as actual object vs. restored images.

Shared David's concerns over the nature of Photoshop.

Agreed with Lynn's thoughts on the implications of applying our own perspective onto an image when editing it.

Post 5. Reading Images

             Errol Morris’ “Case of the Inappropriate Alarm Clock” covered some familiar topics for me, as I took 1930’s American art last semester. Many of the issues stem from the debate over whether photographs should be viewed as documentary images versus posed images. One thing that became clear in that class is that although the photos might have been staged, they have over time become accepted as documentary evidence of a time.

            I think this raises an issue for historians: how important the origin and veracity of an image is, especially of a medium such as photography which has so often been viewed as more truthful and immediate than painting or engraving. When searching for an image, it’s not enough to find one that fits your theme. It’s important to know the context of how the image was produced. What did the author of the image want to convey? Who was the intended audience? Does its original meaning match how you want to use it?

            Another level is added to this when it comes to the concept of editing images. Is it more appropriate to use a worn and weathered image, or to show the image as close as possible to how it originally appeared? Before this class it never occurred to me to clean up and restore an image to approximate its original appearance rather than to show the aged version. I guess I always somehow assumed that showing the wear and tear somehow conveyed a sense of authenticity, more so than a polished image, which I must not be alone in, as Cameron Moll has developed techniques specifically for achieving the imitation of wear.

            I think what I’m still unsure of is the obligation of the historian. Should an image be presented as it appears currently, or should an image be presented in the most restored quality?

Spring (Break) Cleaning

I need to list the comments I have made so far on blogs. From here on I’ll try to be better about listing comments as I make them.

 

Jan. 25 – commented on Rachel’s blog about getting started

Jan. 31 – commented on Alex’s blog on Web Typography

Feb 9 – Commented on Toni’s blog

Feb. 15 – Commented on Laszlo’s blog on the Death of Print

Feb. 21 – Reviewed Alex’s CSS & Type pages

Feb. 21 – Reviewed John’s CSS & Type Pages

Feb. 28 – Commented on Dan G.’s blog on Standards

 

I hope everyone is enjoying the break.